Month: September 2015

by William Skink

I am not well versed in the anti-vaxxer backlash, so I really appreciated JC’s post pushing back on the lazy caricature presented by PW.

I’m not sure people without kids (and maybe I’m being too presumptuous here) can really appreciate weighing the fear of preventable illness with the fear of pharmaceutical companies cutting corners with the products that get literally injected into our children.

Having kids also amplifies the horror one experiences seeing the image of a dead toddler washed up on the beach. Every parent worth a damn sees that dead kid as their dead kid, and their heart screams.

For me, the world view I relate to adds another layer of rage. There is all this talk of Syrian refugees, but not nearly enough accurate talk of why all these Syrian refugees.

Why ask why?

Doing a bang-up job avoiding that question, the Missoulian has a nice human interest piece on the efforts of the Risho family to welcome Syrian refugees to Missoula:

…Risho is part of an effort in Missoula to help Syrian refugees in the midst of a growing humanitarian crisis. In Europe, more and more families are fleeing war in Syria and leaving poorly supplied refugee camps in other countries.

A group in Missoula hopes to bring 10 of those families here. It’s just one of the ideas the group is discussing, but it’s personal to Risho, and it’s already showing the giving spirit of the community.

Betsy Mulligan-Dague, executive director of the Jeannette Rankin Peace Center, said a handful of people came together last week who are unconnected but share a concern for the refugee crisis.

“All of a sudden, we have actions that are happening and people wanting to participate and money coming in. It’s heartwarming that that kind of response is out there,” Mulligan-Dague said.

My emphasis, because it’s only all of a sudden to a media that has studiously ignored the ongoing efforts at regime change in Syria. If full context was provided, America’s direct role in creating this refugee crisis would necessitate not just accepting a few thousand refugees, but stopping the funding and arming of jihadists to destroy the secular government in Syria.

Instead of full context, how about Another human interest piece? This story is the perfect feel good story. It’s about a 14 year old girl, Zoe Wilson, who raised funds online then sent 2,000 dollars in supplies to Syrian refugees in Hungary. This part caught my attention:

Wilson said she hopes increased attention to the refugee issue will lead to the U.S. granting asylum to more Syrians.

“Currently, the U.S. is only granting asylum to 1,500 people. Germany is accepting 800,000. This is a world problem, and as long as the situation in Syria stays as awful, people will be leaving and seeking asylum,” she said.

Yeah, it was thought that Germany was stepping up to accept hundreds of thousands of refugees, but Merkel is now rethinking the political fallout:

Germany has reintroduced border controls with Austria, its interior minister has confirmed, halting all trains and deploying 2,100 riot police to help carry out checks.

Speaking at a press conference called at short notice, Thomas de Maizière said the controls were being applied with immediate effect “to bring some order to the entry of refugees”.

While the exact nature of the checks remained unclear, the minister described them as a “safety measure” which was within the remit of the Schengen Agreement.

Anyway, all this talk about helping refugees is moot because these refugees are being exploited by the Obama administration to justify another round of regime change in Syria. Regime change is a fancy term for war, and war makes refugees. From the link:

President Barack Obama has called on Congress to authorise US military action in Syria. The move has provoked sharp, multifaceted debate in the US Capitol as a resolution moves through the legislative process.

Here is more about this resolution:

The resolution would allow a “a 90 day window” for U.S. military attack in Syria, where both ISIS and the Syrian government would be targeted; with regime change in Syria being the ultimate objective.

The U.S. public has virtually no knowledge of these new developments. A field of candidates campaigning for President haven’t mentioned the subject. The U.S. media’s silence on the issue is deafening.

War produces war refugees. The once-modern societies of Iraq, Libya and Syria were obliterated while the western world watched, seemingly emotionless. But the drowned toddler, named Aylan, unearthed these buried emotions.

Sorry Zoe Wilson and all you Americans on Facebook horrified at the image of a dead toddler. That dead toddler is your tax dollars hard at work. As the West continues to spread death, chaos and misery across the Middle East and North Africa, there will be hundreds of thousands more dead and displaced innocents.

by William Skink

Within these here United States, the chatter surrounding the Iran deal is reaching fever-pitch. The collective freak-out of the GOP is the most useful instrument to keep the conversation corralled to the two party binary, where the GOP play the role reactionary warmongers frothing for military confrontation (to appease their racist base and even more racist allegiance to Israel) and Democrats play the role of reasonable diplomats, the adults in the room, so to speak.

The hubris and arrogance from both sides of this American conversation mask the extreme limitations of our national perspective. A few months ago, Ayatollah Khamenei made a fiery speech days after the Iran deal was signed, vowing to maintain Iranian opposition to US foreign policy in the region. Kerry was disturbed:

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said a speech by Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on Saturday vowing to defy American policies in the region despite a deal with world powers over Tehran’s nuclear program was “very disturbing”.

“I don’t know how to interpret it at this point in time, except to take it at face value, that that’s his policy,” he said in the interview with Saudi-owned Al Arabiya television, parts of which the network quoted on Tuesday.

“But I do know that often comments are made publicly and things can evolve that are different. If it is the policy, it’s very disturbing, it’s very troubling,” he added.

Ayatollah Khamenei told supporters on Saturday that U.S. policies in the region were “180 degrees” opposed to Iran’s, at a speech in a Tehran mosque punctuated by chants of “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”.

(emphasis added)

At The Saker, Sayed Hasan has a piece (translated from French) titled Iran Deal: the Islamic Republic sticks to its guns. Here is how Hasan interprets Iran’s resolve to be a presence of opposition to the violent oppression of US foreign policy:

Sayed Khamenei also wished to reaffirm the inviolable principles of the Islamic Republic and its foreign policy, for which no compromise, no negotiations are even considered. The Iran/US dialogue stops at the nuclear issue and is not intended to extend to other issues. The hostility of Iran to the US government, considered “the heart of global Arrogance” is unconditional, as well as its hostility to the State of Israel: “Death to America” ​​and “Death to Israel” will remain the fundamental slogans, constituting the very identity of the Islamic Republic and the Iranian people – and John Kerry should know that it is much more than mere rhetoric . In this way and predictably , Sayed Khamenei reaffirmed the unwavering support of the Islamic Republic to the oppressed peoples of the region, be it humanitarian, diplomatic and moral support for Bahrain and Yemen, or total support (economic, financial , military, etc.) for the countries and movements of the growing Resistance Axis – Iraq, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other factions of the Palestinian resistance. Moreover, Sayed Khamenei did not even make this distinction, simply speaking of ongoing – and obviously increasing – support to all.

Finally, Sayed Khamenei referred to the march of History by emphasizing the many mistakes and setbacks of the United States since the end of World War II, sure to be repeated. The Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution, which is also the ultimate authority to which refer tens of millions of Shiite Muslims around the world, both in the East and the West – including Hezbollah, who consider him nothing less than the politic and religious leader of the Islamic Community as a whole – confirms that far from being an arch-conservative , as claimed by Western propaganda, he remains at the forefront of international political and social struggles, following the example of a country such as Cuba. This can be difficult to conceive of in the West, historically used to seeing “traditional” religious authorities, such as the Pope for the Catholic Church, have conservative and even reactionary positions on many international political and social issues and be committed to maintaining the established order and teaching resignation to the peoples. Yet, it truly is on Islam and in its name that the Islamic Republic bases its internationalist policy of fighting against oppression and helping the destitute, and Iran is without any doubt destined to play a leading role in the world of tomorrow.

Americans must be prevented from being exposed to this perspective. ISIS is the great evil, a new evolution of enemy sprouting from the violence and chaos we have unleashed, not some tool of US allies in the region.

Luckily, the fascist security state continues to move toward criminalizing dissent, making it less and less likely that journalists and academic scholars will risk their own freedom to inform the public:

When the U.S. Department of Defense published a new Law of War Manual (LOW) this past summer, editorialists at the New York Times sat up and took notice. Their concern was that the manual stated that journalists could be deemed “unprivileged belligerents.” The editorial explained that as a legal term “that applies to fighters that are afforded fewer protections than the declared combatants in a war.” In fact, it is far more insidious than that innocuous description.

Here is the manual’s definition: “‘Unlawful combatants’ or ‘unprivileged belligerents’ are persons who, by engaging in hostilities, have incurred one or more of the corresponding liabilities of combatant status (e.g., being made the object of attack and subject to detention), but who are not entitled to any of the distinct privileges of combatant status (e.g., combatant immunity and POW status).”

The key phrase here is “being made the object of attack.” For slow-witted New York Times editorialists, that means journalists can be killed as can any enemy soldier in wartime. “Subject to detention” means a journalist deemed an unprivileged belligerent will be put into military detention if captured. As with any enemy belligerent, however, if “capture is not feasible,” they would be killed if possible, by drone perhaps if in a foreign country.

These trends, pushed in earnest under Bush after 9/11, have continued, and in some instances, even accelerated under Obama. But that can’t be fathomed within the two party binary, especially by lesser evil Democrat cheerleaders promoting electing Democrats as the first step to righting the wrongs of imperial US intervention.

Sometimes one can find an honest statement about how the US operates abroad. At The Intercept, a short, two paragraph excerpt from a 2013 Washington Post article makes this surprisingly direct statement about what side of the security/Democracy divide Obama has chose to conduct US foreign policy. For context, the Post article is describing the Obama administration’s growing alliances with regimes in Africa known to be blatant violators of human-rights:

Human-rights groups have also accused the U.S. government of holding its tongue about political repression in Ethiopia, another key security partner in East Africa.

“The countries that cooperate with us get at least a free pass,” acknowledged a senior U.S. official who specializes in Africa but spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid retribution. “Whereas other countries that don’t cooperate, we ream them as best we can.”

When you leave the bubble of American media you can see a bit clearer why America has no credibility when it comes to its criticisms of non-cooperating countries violations of human rights, because if you’re a cooperating country, you can go ahead and imprison, kill or torture whoever the state wants without repercussion.

When those who argue for an American led unipolar world, I hope they take into consideration the total absence of morals and values involved in conducting foreign policy. This is what those who wield power really think: fuck democracy and fuck human rights. Despite a more articulate Democrat in the White House, you’re either with us or against us is still the operating principle.

And we’ll get more of the same with Hillary or Bernie.

By JC

Gratuitous link to the blog I am responding to.

Anti-vaccination Activist: Vaccines cause autism. Jenny McCarthy said so, and I don’t want my kid to be vaccine injured!

1) Jenny McCarthy is a red herring. The flak about her prominent role in the vaccine debate is only because she was a playboy bunny — and blonde. And who would ever believe anything a blonde playboy bunny would say… right??? You’d have to be a pretty marginal person to do so (or so PW would have us believe).

Anti-vaxxers: Meh. I saw a bunch of stuff on Facebook, so I’m not vaccinating my kids.

2) Casting anti-vaxxers as nothing more than FacebookBots again is a thinly veiled attempt to delegitimize any argument that people may have by casting them as ignorant. Some of us were anti-vaxxers 25-30 years ago before the internet projected it into a red-hot topic.

Anti-vaxxers: Look, I don’t trust that science. My worldview dictates that anything from Official Sources is probably corrupted by giant corporations.

3) Implying that anti-vaccers don’t trust science again ignores the fact that many anti-vaxxers are scientists and intelligent people — who may or may not believe the pro-vaccination research — and have good reasons behind their position. Casting anti-vaxxers as anti-science (like he is doing) allows him to ignore any science or public policy that may question either the safety or efficacy of vaccines.

Want some real reasons to be anti-vaccination? Here’s a few (there are many more):

1) What gives the government the right to demand that they can inject undisclosed (and potentially harmful) materials into one’s bloodstream? Do public health concerns raise to the level that individuals have to give up certain inalienable rights in order to participate in society — like go to school? One would think that if you believe that the government has the right to inject undisclosed substances into our bodies, then maybe the government, in its quest to “protect” public health, might first enact a public health care system that all citizens have a right to participate in.

2) If the science is so settled, then why does the government maintain a slush fund to pay off those who have been harmed by vaccines (the hush money is funded by a 75 cents per shot excise tax)? If the science was settled, you’d think local governments demanding vaccinations for access to public schools wouldn’t be afraid of lawsuits claiming harm. I mean, what jury trial would convict and award damages if the science said vaccines were safe and didn’t cause harm?

3) Why, when the anti-vaccine discussion comes up, must we be shuffled off onto stupid arguments, when there are many legitimate studies in mainstream, peer-reviewed academic journals that show the potential dangers of vaccinations?

Here’s one: “Review of Vaccine Induced Immune Overload and the Resulting Epidemics of Type 1 Diabetes and Metabolic Syndrome, Emphasis on Explaining the Recent Accelerations in the Risk of Prediabetes and other Immune Mediated Diseases.”

“There has been an epidemic of inflammatory diseases that has paralleled the epidemic on iatrogenic immune stimulation with vaccines. Extensive evidence links vaccine-induced immune overload with the epidemic of type 1 diabetes.”

Here’s a quote from a government CDC scientist in a legal deposition admitting he fudged the data in a study:

“I regret that my coauthors and I omitted statistically significant information in our 2004 article published in the journal Pediatrics. The omitted data suggested that African American males who received the MMR vaccine before age 36 months were at increased risk for autism.”

So why can’t we have a rational discussion about vaccines, without resorting to red herrings, guilt-by-association tactics, and false narratives? No wonder Monsanto gets away with its BS — because people like Polish Wolf amplify the delegitimization of any who would question the lock-step drive to vaccinate, or ignore the existence of real science that can inform the debate.

No, we must all just cowtow to the powers that be and offer our children up for a grand experiment in toxic injections. I find no humor in Polish Wolf’s chosen literary device here.

His innuendo that anti-vaxxers are responsible for the depredations of Monsanto is sad. It is tantamount to him telling those of us who have the gall to question the “authority” of the government or certain acceptable scientific outlets should just shut up, or bear the responsibility for the negative affects and horrors that Monsanto’s chemicals, genetic engineering, and patenting have wrought upon the world.

by William Skink

What to say? Tomorrow is September 11th, 2015, which means we are 14 years down stream from the collective trauma of that terrible day. I can barely recall the 22 year old I was before that Tuesday morning. 9/11 was the event that greatly accelerated my growing suspicion about a lot of things. 14 years later, my patience is thin and tolerance for politics pretty much zilch. I give up. The capacity for nationalistic delusion is bottomless.

Right now the nationalist lens is eyeballing the Iran deal. There is a lot of noise around this issue and most of it is crap. I was most impressed by today’s analysis from The Polish Wolf, who skillfully frames this congressional insurrection against the President into an overly simplistic binary in order to promote electing Democrats as the solution.

PW suggests that, despite the high likelihood this deal will go through, it’s not enough to secure peace. Putting aside for the moment I don’t accept the premise that this deal is about securing peace, let’s take a look at the opening fear-mongering:

The title of this post may seem odd, considering that I’ve been consistently supporting the nuclear deal with Iran (and indeed, have been supporting some sort of deal like it since 9th grade). But the fact is that the deal that is likely to pass, while necessary, isn’t sufficient to secure peace. A deal involving inspections of facilities that could be used for WMD is exactly what we had before the Iraq war, after all, and it’s almost certain that those favoring war with Iran are going to keep trying, and indeed have already made progress.

The first step of course is to connect Iran to our enemy de jour, ISIS. Top Republicans like Ted Cruz have already been doing just that, referring to “Global Jihadism” in an effort to find a Venn diagram circle big enough to fit such disparate entities as ISIS and Iran. Right wing media like Breitbart and Fox are rolling with it, arguing that there’s no real difference between the two.

The insanity of right wing media is the best friend of reasonable Democrats. Point to that, and anything that comes after will seem tame by comparison. Like this:

All of this will likely have little effect until January of 2017 – Obama, after all, is unlikely to sabotage his own legacy, or admit he signed a bad deal. But a pro-war president, which seems to mean most of the Republican field, could not only sabotage the deal but also instigate direct hostilities against Iran.

How can this be prevented? First, elect Democrats, and elect them carefully. It’s impossible to calculate how much more likely a Democratic Senator is than a Republican one to support peace with Iran, because that involves dividing by zero, but it’s clear that at the moment the Republican party is dedicated to increasing tensions with Iran. Don’t be fooled by ‘mavericks’ like Rand Paul: war with Iran, or even increasing sanctions, certainly flies in the face of his ‘libertarian’ philosophy, but he won’t let that stop him from supporting it. However, the few Democrats (Ben Cardin, Robert Menendez, Joe Manchin, and Chuck Schumer) who oppose the deal also represent a danger beyond their small numbers (and, in at least one case, likely imminent criminal convictions): they put a bipartisan gloss on what is in fact a radical attempt to drag America into continuous conflict with Iran – a conflict that has gained us nothing, cost us a great deal, and continues to make peace in the region less and less likely. For Montanans, things are more clear cut: we have a Republican opposing the deal and a Democrat supporting it. However, on the East Coast, it’s clear the party needs to make a decision that conflict with Iran is unacceptable, and supporting further conflict is conduct unbecoming of a Democratic elected official.

Maybe readers can help me out here. When PW says in the second sentence But a pro-war president… is that implying President Obama is NOT a pro-war president? Because if that’s the case, why go on with this post?

We go on because seemingly reasonable people get even more disconnected from reality, like how all we need to do is just inform America about looming war:

Besides politics, however, informed citizens who can see the pressure for war coming from far away can work to prevent further hostilities in other ways. Declaring war generally requires convincing Americans it’s a good idea – which is much easier if they are already pre-disposed to see Iranians as villains. Inhibiting this tendency means educating family and friends about the real situation in Iran, it means respectfully correcting erroneous, bellicose thinking on social media, and it means standing up to blowhards and warmongers. But educators (who are a major readership of this here blog) have a special duty. I know that students of my generation were woefully undereducated about Afghan and Iraqi culture until it was too late. I see a better chance for Iran, partially because people like Stephen Kinzer identified America’s bellicose intentions far in advance, and the process of educating Americans started far earlier. Far more Americans know the history of Muhammed Mossadegh than knew about the backgrounds of Afghanistan or Iraq, and even a generally jingoistic Hollywood has taken notice, including that critical background in films like Argo that could have otherwise presented unmitigated demonization.

Remember, this soft-power educating of our family and friends is just about Iran. I’m not sure accurate information about what’s happening in places like Ukraine and Libya qualify for indoctrinating loved ones.

And let us especially not talk honestly about Syria. Earlier this month, b at MoA pondered what interests could be pushing the Migrant Media Campaign. For discerning peeps who know how to read between the lines, the use of public outrage over being confronted by pictures of a dead toddler washed up, face down, on the beach, became clear: something must be done, and that something is being channeled toward regime change in Syria.

Will the R2P crowd call for another no-fly zone in Syria? And if they do, why not a similar response to the humanitarian crisis developing in Yemen, where America’s pals, the Saudis, are waging a pointless war they can’t win unless genocidal policies are deployed?

These are tough issues. Thankfully, American football kicked off tonight, and last I checked the Patriots are whooping the Steelers.

Go America!